Today in Cold War History
1950 – Swedish tanker rams British submarine Truculent in the Thames, 64 die
1950 – USSR re-introduces death penalty for treason, espionage & sabotage
1962 – Vietnam War: Operation Chopper, the first American combat mission in the war, takes place. Helicopters transported over 1,000 South Vietnamese paratroopers for an assault on a suspected NLF stronghold 10 miles west of Saigon. The NLF were surprised and soundly defeated, but they gained valuable combat experience they would later use with great effect against US troops. The paratroopers also captured a sought-after underground radio transmitter.
1966 : President Lyndon Johnson revealed that he thinks that war troops should stay in Vietnam. He wanted the troops to stay for as long as necessary. At the time, Lyndon Johnson’s main concern was that China was attempting to take over all of Asia. This would then lead to the spread of communism.
1971 – The Harrisburg Seven: Reverend Philip Berrigan and five others are indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C. The Harrisburg Seven were a group of religious anti-war activists, led by Philip Berrigan, charged in 1971 in a failed conspiracy case in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, located at Harrisburg. The “Seven” were Berrigan, Sister Elizabeth McAlister, Rev. Neil McLaughlin, Rev. Joseph Wenderoth, Eqbal Ahmad, Anthony Scoblick, and Mary Cain Scoblick.The group was unsuccessfully prosecuted for alleged criminal plots during the Vietnam War era. Six of the seven were Roman Catholic nuns or priests. The seventh, Ahmad, was a Pakistani journalist, American-trained political scientist, and self-described “odd man out” of the group. Haverford College physics professor William C. Davidon was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. In 1970, the group attracted government attention when Berrigan, then imprisoned, and McAlister were caught trading letters that alluded to kidnapping National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and blowing up steam tunnels.
1971 – Negotiations over price of petroleum begin in Tehran between 6 OPEC Persian Gulf states and 22 oil companies
1971 – 2 bombs explode at UK Employment Secretary Robert Carr’s home. He escaped injury when The Angry Brigade anarchist group exploded two bombs outside his house. More than thirty years later a member of the group issued a public apology to Carr, and sent him a Christmas card.
1974 – Libya & Tunisia announces they are merging as “Islamic Arab Republic”
1976 – The United Nations Security Council votes 11-1 to allow the Palestine Liberation Organization to participate in a Security Council debate (without voting rights).
1982 : The British Prime Minister’s ( Margaret Thatcher ) son has been reported missing in the Sahara desert while taking part in the Paris-Dakar race ( Mark Thatcher, his co-driver and mechanic were discovered safe and well six days later ).
1991 : Congress votes to authorise the use of military force against Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait.

My goal with this blog is to offend everyone in the world at least once with my words… so no one has a reason to have a heightened sense of themselves. We are all ignorant, we are all found wanting, we are all bad people sometimes.